Also, I have absolutely no compunction in going back to the counter and pleasantly saying “Excuse me, but these fries are cold. Can I please get a fresh batch?” I have yet to be refused, but then I don’t often receive fries that are so cold and mush I can’t stand them.
Not really restaurant and not quite fast food, the same day I got horribly overcooked steak we stopped at a Orange Julius for a drink later. My drink was fine, but my friend’s tasted horrible so she asked them to make her another one. They did, but they basically stuck the blender into soapy water (the one they’d use to make the original horrible one) and didn’t even rinse it out before starting to add in the ingredients.
When asked to rinse out the blender the kid gave her a snotty answer, and the manager (who looked to be an older woman) just looked on until my friend demanded her money back.
ETA: featherlou it does work, and wonderfully! At least the times I’ve tried it or seen it done.
In America, food is cheap and plentiful. Unlike Spain, where la gente is uniformly trim and gorgeous, bronzed by the sun, and somewhat overeducated, but where we still gather on moonlit nights for the traditional hunt of the jabato, whose succulent flesh is enjoyed as jamón serrano in the subsequent fiesta, which lasts a full week, during which self-adorned conchas are accepted as legal tender for all purchases save those services procured in the local bordello, where (for traditional reasons whose origins have become murky over time) the putas accept only small, unmarked denominations of Hungarian Forint.
…what you guys don’t drink they have to throw away at the end of the night and eat the loss. Not a big deal, with Plain Iced Tea… a different story when you’re talking about premixed sweet tea. The hardest part of food service is deciding how much is going to be enough, the overage is a hit.
I don’t understand your second sentence. It does intrigue me, however. It sounds like something I’d be interested in reading, if I understood it.
Anyway, of course I’d reather pay less for more, but I posted my comment on the assumption that that possibility is not on the table. I figure the restaurant is charging me as much as it imagines it can get away with charging me. So I’d like them to give me less food, so that the amount of money they think they can get away with charging becomes smaller.
My one serious restaurant complaint is something that seems to be widespread here in Germany - not getting to pay in a timely manner.
Examle: one evening I spent a few weeks ago.
I got a cinema ticket for a late (23:00) movie at the local cinema. As it’s much earlier and I have got a new book with me I plan on a nice dinner at a nearby restaurant.
19:10: Enter nice family-run Italian restaurant. Break out nice book 19:15: Order mineral water, antipasti plate and insalata mista 19:17: Water arrives. Drink, read book 19:35: Food arrives. Eat, read book 20:25: Food was very good. Order a plate of Gorgonzola cheese. 20:30: Gorgonzola arrives. Eat, read book. 20:55: Gorgonzola also very good. Order an espresso and ask for the bill. 21:00: Espresso arrives, but no bill yet. 21:05: I’d like to walk a bit before cinema. Try to catch propriator’s eye but no dice, he’s walking around serving people but always looking elsewhere. 21:15: Proprietor at bar but not looking in my direction. I stare at him for some minutes but he doesn’t look in my direction. 21:20: Proprietor walks around cleaning tables; cannot catch his eye. 21:30: Getting slightly worried (in the light of previous similar experiences) 21:40: Propriator’s family eating dinner together - would be impolite to disturb them. 22:00: Getting a bit more worried about making the movie. 22:05: Proprietor walks around cleaning tables; cannot catch his eye. Try waving. 22:10: Getting annoyed. 22:25: Proprietor at bar but cannot make eye contact. Wave, to no avail. 22:30: Getting more annoyed. 22:35: Propriator’s wife walking around cleaning tables; I stare at her for several minutes willing her to make eye contact. 22:40: Getting furious. 22:40: Entertaining homicidal fantasies. 22:55: “Sorry, but we are closing now. Do you want another espresso? I’d like to bring you the bill else.” 22:57: Pay the bill, smiling, rounding up with a 10 % tip. 22:58: Proprietor’s family wonders why guest exits restaurant at the speed of a cannonball.
This is not the best answer – many times, the employee simply tosses the cold fries into the fryer for a few seconds. This boils off the salt and marginally heats up the fries, making the customer feel like they have “won” when in fact, all they’ve got for their trouble is more grease.
It always amazes me how people get so angry with customers who expect gasp the service/goods for which they pay. I just don’t get that mentality. I mean, if you are unable or unwilling to provide good service or a good product, don’t expect me to just STFU and pay. It’s simple, I eat out when I want to be waited on and not have to cook. If I wanted surly service, poor food and the drama, I’d just stay home and as my husband to serve me.
If waiting tables is that hard, perhaps the service industry isn’t for you? Me? I admit that I hate people, but if I fuck up their order, I am more than willing to listen to them vent about it – and I am not going to call them a douchebag because they asked for no garlic bread and I was too lazy to write it down and brought it out to them. As a customer, I do not owe you, the server, any explanation as to why I don’t want XYZ on my plate – I might be deathly allergic to it, I might have been raped by a slice of garlic toast when I was 8 – that’s none of your business. What is your business is that I asked for none of it and you brought it anyway. If it’s that hard to write down my order, please seat me at another table where the server isn’t so lazy
What part of ‘volunteer’ are you still failing to grasp? Or the explanation that her subsequent behaviour made her into a douchebag? I am reading the same thread, aren’t I? Or maybe, like ‘no garlic bread’, some things don’t always stick in the mind.
You tried for *two whole hours * to catch the waiter’s or managers’ attention? Why didn’t you simply get up, walk over to the waiter or the counter and ask for your bill, explaining you were in a bit of a hurry? I do that all the time. Never encountered any problems.
Man, you’re a serious fucking douchebag and you have no reading comprehension skills at all. I won’t bother reiterating the points I’ve already made. What I will reiterate is that humans make mistakes and don’t deserve to have things thrown at them, be they insults or pickles, idiot.
What ticks me off on the rare occassions that I take the family to a “family restaurant” like Big Boys/Denny’s/ Perkins for breakfast, is that stinkin, crud infested, bus cart that some schlep pushes around all morning. I hate hate hate to even see that gross cart full of grimy dishes smeared with egg yolks and sausage gravy bits coming down the aisle to be parked right next to my table where we are trying to eat . The filthy rags used to swab down the tables, the mound of festering plates built up higher than the poor underpaid laborer who has to grunt and push with all his minnie might to get that claptrap cart rolling again. And then to have to watch while he slings the used plates off a table and into the cart, only to see bits of food and splashes of goo bounce off the plate and scatterdrop near the steaminmg buffet tables of fresh food.
DOnt get me started on the beauty of buffet tables and the recreation of watching the fine unwashed patrons who frequent them, dip, sniff, and shake their flakes everywhere.
